


a certain kind of death

by kuro49



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, DCU, Justice League (2017)
Genre: Gen, Talk of Suicide, justice league fam feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 03:43:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12832578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: Alfred cannot always be there, this is why he has the rest of the league watching over Bruce.





	a certain kind of death

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kakakc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kakakc/gifts).



> early bday present because you have been sad enough about the new jl movie. hope you like. : DD

Bruce Wayne has a contingency plan (named Clark Kent), and his contingency plan has a contingency plan (her name is Lois).

Bruce Wayne also has a self-destruction sequence that he always seems to be a short countdown away from. He knows exactly what it takes for good men to turn cruel. He has seen it enough times to name the steps it takes. This is, in case.

He sees the potential outcomes, and imagines not a lot of them has him walking away.

 

Alfred meets the team within the depths of the cave.

Comes down to see a lineup of people, more than half of which he has only seen through surveillance photos. Even without the introductions, he knows the extent of what they are capable of. Alfred looks from a King to a God, and can almost chuckle at the man dressed like a bat. After Doomsday, after the death of Superman, Alfred isn't as naive as to think that there aren't things much worse to exist in this universe of theirs.

He sees how his charge looks in the middle of this rag-tag team of what has to be enough in the face of it all.

Alfred figures out Bruce’s plan before he shares it with the rest of the team.

 

“You think this is a bad idea, don’t you, Alfred?”

He is not Batman's moral compass, he has been an accomplice for too many years to call the blood on his hands clean. He is family and there is something more profound in that single word when Batman drops the cowl, then the cape until it is just Bruce standing there.

“Master Bruce, even you know this is the worst one you’ve had just yet.”

The resurrection of Superman is not going to go how Bruce intends it to, Alfred has carried out enough of the caped vigilante’s failed plans to know some things do not change. There is always a sense of absolute in everything Batman does.

“It has to be done.”

“What if he doesn’t want to come back?”

“The world needs him to.” Bruce says, like that isn’t the same thing he tells himself again and again. You do not have a direct hand in putting Superman in the grave and walk away without thinking everything that occurs as a result is not your doing too. “One more bad deed to add to my name is the least I deserve.”

And here is that word.

 

Death is a certainty, he is only human, he can make his death worth something more than his life could amount to.

 

He doesn’t expect Arthur Curry to be the first one to say it, and out loud too, like this.

“You’ve got a death wish.” Arthur tells him, a certain kind of weight in his voice. He is not looking to make this hurt. But Arthur Curry is not a man you look to for anything to be sugarcoated and sweet. “I don’t.”

The implications are there, but this is a suicide mission for one masked as a mission for six, Bruce has no intention for anyone but himself to die. Arthur doesn't leave much room for him to argue though when he continues with the same even gaze that sits heavy, burns through the Kevlar and the underarmour of the Batsuit until it hits bare, bruised skin. The facts are all here and the fact is that he is not. But it is the sentiments that count, lasso or not, Arthur can be kind too. 

“You begged me to come with you, Wayne, at least have the courtesy to stay for the duration I’m here.”

What the Batman did not imagine is this; Arthur Curry doesn't have the inclination to leave just yet.

“I wouldn’t call it beg.”

Bruce has seen ocean waves break apart against Arthur’s back. He is as close to a force of nature as it is possible.

Arthur scoffs but the levity is back and they are both on steadier ground even though it is still not easier. But perhaps it is better, this shouldn't be easy.

“I threw a perfectly nice jacket on the ground to make sure you couldn’t track me.”

“We both know asking nicely wouldn’t have worked.”

“You could’ve tried.”

 

He could've done a lot of things.

Here may be one version of the truth, but it is absolute because here is the one Bruce Wayne believes in: He can't undo just as much.

  

It is not the calm before the storm, it hasn’t been calm for a long time now.

Bruce Wayne doesn’t stay in Gotham for a good night of sleep. It is almost three in the morning when he comes up from the Batcave and in the eerie silence of his home, there is a light on in his kitchen and Barry Allen sitting there at his dining table with a box of pizza.

"I know this really isn't my place to say, given you're _Batman_ but have you ever thought about, and I am just throwing this out there on a whim that you might listen to anyone, like at all.”

“What is it?”

He sits down across from the kid and asks, exhausted in ways far pass his physicality.

"You can relax."

He takes a bite of the slice of pizza he is holding, chews then swallows, and the kid could give him that customary grin but he doesn't. He only pushes a slice over to him, leaving a streak of orange-yellow grease across the cardboard until it is sitting right in front of Bruce Wayne.

"It helps."

Bruce has no idea if Barry means taking a breather at the end of the world or having a slice of pizza loaded with four kinds of cheese.

He picks it up, he bites into it. It is still hot and the thick tomato sauce drips.

He figures it doesn't really matter, and this time, even he has no idea if he means the sauce on his table top or the fate of the world when they resurrect Superman from the dead.

 

Self sacrifice is not a word he is interested in using because it is far more noble than anything he is capable of. Steppenwolf is not about to change this fact, he has far too much blood on his hands to be called a hero in any of this.

 

“You used to be a joke at worst and a cautionary tale at best.”

It isn’t like Bruce doesn’t remember, it is more like it shouldn’t matter. Before the cybernetic body or the accident or even his career as GCU’s star football player, Victor Stone is born and raised in Gotham City.

He grew up with an urban legend of a vigilante the city called Batman.

“How does the real thing compare?”

“Thought you’d be less,” Victor pauses, not because he doesn’t know the word to use but because Victor Stone might be a lot of things, and he is figuring out so much more, but he isn’t really one for confrontations like this, “reckless.”

Still, some things are not better left unsaid.

Bruce is guilty, and he has no intentions of deluding anyone on this team to think that he is a good man.

“I used to be worse.”

He has Jason’s desecrated suit hanging in the Batcave as a reminder for just that. There isn’t much more to say about that, he knows Victor can find what he wants to and no amount of expensive firewall is about to change that. He also knows Victor is not one to dig.

(He has seen copies of security tapes wiped clean from their original sources and he can examine the fights frame by frame if he really wants to. But even seeing the fights in passing, Victor notices the shift.

Batman is becoming more reckless but never with anyone else but himself.)

Victor turns to look at him, like he isn’t convinced.

 

Forty minutes later, Victor locates a tiny Russian town.

 

Death comes, indiscriminate in one sweeping motion.

Death goes, and can take even gods with it. What is one man in the hundreds and thousands and millions that came before. She is a witness to it all. Diana watches him from the outskirts of Pozharnov with a landscape razed of humanity, sees him lead an army of parademons through what remains and knows exactly what he is looking for.

 

In the anger that pulses in her blood and the recognition that if Bruce Wayne is looking to atone, there are worse things for him to do before he can die. If she has to admit to it, she is still just more than a little bit mad at the way Steve's name passed through his lips, he is not a tactic to be used on her.

The skies are a smear of bloody red, she gestures for Arthur to follow her lead.

She doesn't save him. She stops him.

She tightens her grip around her sword in resolute, brings up dust with her every step and stops a suicidal man heading for certain death.

The Batmobile is worse for wear but it is running and he isn’t dead.

“Your death means nothing if you die here, Bruce. Make it count for something.” Diana says with barely a glance in his direction as she stares straight ahead to where Steppenwolf awaits. He has to learn this on his own, otherwise there is no worth in the lesson. She continues without pause, he isn’t about to die on her watch. “Live.”

It is an absolute, an unfair request perhaps, and she is probably asking much more of him than he can give. If she is kinder to him, she can tell him that she cannot do this alone. She can ask him to help her save this world.

But Bruce Wayne is not Steve Trevor. He doesn't get to play the martyr in this war.

She leaves before he can respond; Bruce Wayne is a smart man. He can figure out what must be done.

 

It doesn’t work out the way he intends it to, but it works out nonetheless.

Of all the potential outcomes, he doesn’t think this one should be the one to play out.

(Maybe in another universe, it doesn’t, and he dies a much crueler man than when he started. Maybe, it is best.)

 

Clark has an idea that Bruce understands this fundamentally, but he still wants to tell him this in person. The home he grows up in, the house he calls _home_ stands behind him, with corn fields going on for miles is what grounds him.

“You can’t do this forever.”

Bruce knows this, of course, he does.

“This is why I have you.”

Clark looks at him, sees the bruises that haven’t faded, sees the slight tilt of his body as he favors one side. It has been weeks since Steppenwolf is gone. But Bruce Wayne hasn't been a young man in a long time.

“I can't do everything around here. It's a team effort, Bruce." He knows him as a man that isn’t so forgiving. It doesn’t work for Clark, but it might just work for the Batman who takes every hit to heart. It doesn’t have to be true. “You’re why we are here."

 

Leaving Smallville, Bruce Wayne finds that he doesn’t deserve to die. (He deserves much worse because this is the harder choice, to live with everything that he has done.) Maybe, this is better.

 


End file.
